The Memory Remains
by Chant99
Summary: A RPG/Fallen Angel Series Mix. Chiana has a dream about a forgotten memory from her past... a memory that has something to do with her new Bond-mate.


She was running.  
With every twist and every turn, the tunnels became smaller and smaller.  
Still she couldn't shake her pursuers.  
She came around a corner at a full run only to slide to an abrupt halt - the tunnel ended at a new work site.  
She looked left and then right seeking a way to escape. There was no way to go forward and she couldn't go back that way she had come. Already she could hear the heavy boots coming closer.  
Checking the area franticly once more, she spied the plasma-spade she somehow missed the first time. She bent down and snatched the forearm long cutting tool from the pile of broken crates and packing boxes. The jumble fell over with a clatter but the noise didn't matter. They knew where she was anyway and she had a weapon to face them with now... not that it probably would do much good against them.  
She had witnessed the Enforcer that had been closest on her trail tangle with one of the Keedva that inhabited and fed off the Budong. Their paths had unexpectedly crossed with the large furry beast and the Shrike's blades made short work of the unlucky creature.  
She fumbled and finally found the power gage, the tool had almost a full power charge left in it.  
  
Panting heavily from the exertion of her run, she looked back down the tunnel in time to see the huge dark figure turn the corner. The creature saw her at the same instant and began to move toward her. Its right hand curled into a tight fist and a pair of claw-like blades presented themselves from the metal brace on its forearm.  
The Shrikes had been chasing her for arns since she'd stolen the money from the Nogelti crystals that S'Bogg had meant to use to pay the Black Syndicate their cut of the mining operation. Temmon might have forgiven her for the theft. He had always told her after they had been intimate how much he loved her and that there was nothing he wouldn't give her... or forgive her for. S'Bogg on the other hand was jealous that she had chosen his brother as her lover and obviously had pointed her out as the thief who had snurched the Syndicate's cut of the crystal profit. The Syndicate courier had unleashed the four Shrikes that had accompanied him to hunt her and bring back the money... after eradicating her.  
The problem was, her brother had the money they'd stolen and was waiting for her aboard the transport ship they were suppose to leave the Budong on.  
The assassin closed with her and she backed away another step. Something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye and she looked back to the stack of crates that had fallen over when she grabbed the plasma spade. Hidden behind them, was a hole. Either it was something new somebody was cutting to mine for a Nogelti vein or one of the many ventilation shafts that ran all through the dead Budong to supply the workers will breathable air as they cut deeper into the hard dead flesh. She didn't care either way and it looked big enough for her to fit in if she could just make it over to it.  
  
The armored killer loomed up in front of her before she knew it. The arm with the blades deployed swept back and then rushed forward at her head. She panicked as she thought she might freeze in place instead of acting. To her relief, her legs responded and timed her duck perfectly. She dropped just in the nick of time to avoid the slash. It was so close that she saw a lock of white hair drift to the ground as the blades missed her head and went on to bury themselves in the Budong wall behind her. She dived for the hole.  
The next thing she knew she was in an even tighter tunnel, scrambling upwards. She glanced back down in time to see the assassin's wicked blades tear out a section of the tunnel's opening just a few milli-henta from her boot heels. She pushed herself in further as she heard a low growl that sounded like a curse. She heard metal hitting the floor outside the vent and knew the Shrike was divesting itself of the bulky armor that made it too big to follow her into the hole.  
Her feet franticly kicked at the smooth sides of the flue in an attempt to find a grip to propel her body farther up the passageway. At the same time she was trying to shove the plasma-spade ahead of her. The noise behind her told her that the stalker had already entered the vent and was gaining, even in this constricted space it was unnaturally fast. She almost crawled unsuspectingly pass a cross-tunnel, but the slight current of fresher air warned her and at the same time told her that this new junction led to another main mine corridor somewhere else.  
Immediately she swung herself feet first into the new route and squirmed the rest of her body inside. The snarl warned her that her pursuer was almost on top of her... she would never make it.  
She switched on the plasma tool and held it up with sweaty hands. She couldn't remember being so afraid in her young life... and she was sure she was going to die alone in this vent in the next few microts at the ripe old age of nineteen cycles old.  
  
The Shrike assassin suddenly spring into view in the tunnel aperture she had just left. She was just less then a drec from its unnatural silver glowing eyes. Its head was wrapped in a black cloth that only let the eyes show through a slit - all of them hid their faces like that since arriving at the mining site on the dead Budong.  
Its eyes narrowed as it spotted its prey within easy reach. She screamed, partly in fear, partly to give herself courage... then drove the cutting end of the plasma spade at her attacker.  
She trust with all her weight and the tool buried itself into her stalker's body somewhere between its shoulder and chest muscle on the left side. The smell of burning flesh filled the small space and the creature grunted in pain. She pushed harder and then felt the spade's long cutting blade burst free from the opposite side of her attacker's body. The push still had enough force left afterwards to continue on and bury itself in the wall of the tunnel vent behind it. Pinning the killer to the rough textured surface.  
Her defensive action made it necessary for her to exit the side tunnel with the upper half of her body and as a result she was practically face-to-face with her pursuer over the digging tool. She was close enough to see the silver firelight in its eyes die. Instead now she gazed into eyes that were so blue they almost reviled the skies of some resort worlds she'd been to. They were clear and clean... and filled with pain. But they were humanoid eyes and no longer those of a beast.   
  
For an instant, she almost wanted to apologize. The new eyes sort of glazed over in the next moment and drifted close. She couldn't tell if her attacker had died from his wounds or had merely passed out.  
She shook herself back into the moment a microt later, remembering that there were others after her. And that time was growing short if she and her brother were going to escape aboard that freighter.  
She pulled with all her might and the plasma spade yanked free of the tunnel wall and the Enforcer's body.  
Unpinned, the corpse slid back down the tunnel vent away from her. She paused for only a few microts to watch it disappear back into the darkness below her. She heard nothing stop its descent so she concluded her stalker had been along in the vents with her. She pushed her way back into access vent and...  
  
Chiana abruptly woke up. She'd had another dream again about her past.  
She rubbed at her eyes briefly to banish the rest of the memory and then let her hand wander across the cool bed sheets to find her bond-mate.  
Berret slept peacefully besides her and she snuggled closer to him. Pillowing her head on one of his shoulders, she draped her arm across his bare chest, letting the warmth of his body and the steady raise and fall of his chest reassure her.  
Moya's murmuring background noise was lulling her gently back toward slumber. Her hand idly roamed the expanse of his chest, feeling the scars that crisscrossed there. She knew he couldn't recall where half of them came from, it seemed that each time she looked she discovered a new one somewhere on him. She spread the fingers of her hand as widely as she could over his upper torso, allowing herself for the moment to believe she had the power to protect him from further harm. He was hers now and she vowed that no one would ever hurt Berret again as long as she drew breath. She nuzzled closer and kissed the junction of his neck and shoulder while her hand continued upwards to his opposite shoulder to rest there.  
  
She closed her eyes to settle back to sleep when she noticed an odd feeling about the man's skin where her hand was resting. She resisted the urge to open her eyes again and tried to let her fingertips tell her what the palm of her hand had originally felt. Her fingers that were conditioned to be so sensitive with picking locks, only confirmed her first impression in finer detail. She cracked her eyes opened and raised her head.  
The dim night-light in their quarters was all she needed to see by as she bent to take a closer look at what she found. Resting just below his left shoulder was a scar in the shape of a half-moon.  
She gently touched it so as not to wake Berret. The scar was real, as she knew it would be. She had seen it more times then she could remember but had never given it much more thought then she had any of the others. She compared the scar to her thumb and found it was almost the same size as her thumb was from tip to the first joint. Thinking back, she remembered seeing a smaller version of this scar somewhere on his back.  
"It can't be," she murmured to herself as her recent dream came back to her. "What are the odds?"  
  
She eased quietly from their bed and threw a robe around herself before leaving the room.   
Wearing the pair of silk slippers Zhaan had given her as a bonding present, she virtually made no sound as she moved down Moya's corridors. Still, she couldn't escape Pilot's detection.   
"Is there something wrong, Chiana?" the helmsman asked helpfully from a nearby clamshell.   
"No. No, Pilot. Everything is fine," she quickly replied.  
Pilot looked at her quizzically. "Then why are you up? You normally sleep very soundly." His big eyes took on a look of deep concern for his passenger. "Are you sure you don't want me to call Zhaan... or Malika?"  
"No, Pilot, don't do that."  
"Berret, perhaps then?" he continued.  
Chiana frantically waved her arms at the hologram.  
"NO!" she said more loudly and then cringed. She looked back down the hall toward Quarters and hoped she hadn't awakened anybody else. When no one appeared she turned back to the clamshell.  
"Listen, Shellhead," she said, using one of Crichton's nicknames for Pilot. "Everything's fine. There's nothing to worry about. Can't a person get up and take a midnight stroll?"  
Pilot lifted one eye ridge as he regarded the Nebari over the holo-comm.  
"Anybody else... yes. But Moya and I are aware of how much you like to sleep," the helmsman replied. "And we are also aware how displeased you become when something or someone disturbs your rest."  
Chiana sighed. "Look, Pilot. I just had a thought and I want to head down to the maintenance bay to check something out. Alright?"  
"In the middle of the sleep cycle?"  
"Yes," the Nebari answered, sounding almost at the end of her patience.  
Pilot frowned slightly and pursed his lips.  
"Very well then," he finally said, "If you find yourself in need of assistance, please feel free to call."  
"Thank you," Chiana told him as his image vanished from the holo-comm.  
She continued her way down to the lower tiers. "Why does things have to get so complicated around here sometimes?" she muttered to herself.  
  
Inside the maintenance bay, she headed to the nearest storage locker where she knew certain types of tools were stored. After searching through racks and cases she found what she was looking for.  
She pulled out the practically unused plasma spade. It was virtually identical to the ones they had used to mine crystals on the Temmon's Budong so long ago. She flipped the device over to the cutting end and held her thumb up to the point. The half-moon shaped blade was about as wide as her thumb from tip to the first knuckle.   
She dropped the tool back into the locker without bothering to set it back in its rack.  
"Goddess," she said as she sat herself down on the deck least her legs betray her and give out from under her. "It was him!" Had her subconscious made the connection and the dream had been its way of letting her know? Zhaan would insist it was the work of the Goddess and some of the others would say it was the hand of fate giving life one of its odd little twists.  
The coincidence was still astounding.  
She and Berret had met before the Syndicate captured her.   
She almost jumped up right then to hurry back to their quarters to share her discovery with her bond-mate.  
The dream came back vividly and made her pause in the next moment. He had been a Shrike Enforcer back then, under the control of a collar and Scarran brutality. He had been trying to kill her... and she thought she might have succeeded in killing him in the ventilation shaft.  
The Nebari woman remained seated where she was and drew her legs up closer to her and hugged them.  
How could she tell Berret about this?  
She knew he wouldn't take the news that he had hunted her throughout the Budong when she was nineteen very well. He would only dwell on what would have happened if he'd been successful in catching her then.  
He'd come a long way, but she was sure it would devastate him to know how close it had been.  
She could never tell him she decided.  
Chiana frowned and rested her cheek on her knees as another thought occurred to her.  
How could she tell him she accounted for one of those scars on his body?  
That she tried to kill him also?  
She shuttered to think how things would be now if she had succeeded. She loved him more then anything else in the universe and she never would have known what she'd missed out on if her aim had been a little better that day... or dumb-luck had let the plasma tool pierce a few henta elsewhere in another more vital place. Even an augmented Shrike if unarmored was vulnerable to a wound to a major organ such as the heart.  
  
No, she thought as she got to her feet and bushed off her robe. She could never tell him about that day. It was a secret she would keep forever to herself and hope that one of Berret's nightmares never revealed it to him. Until then, she would hold her bond-mate close and thank the Goddess for the shaky hands of a scared nineteen year old. She would let that one scar on Berret's body remind her just how lucky she was.  
She went back to her quarters to curl up as tightly as she could with her love... she would hold on and dream of the future they would have. 


End file.
